3 ms·
A nuclear power plant can't just "keep spinning without a load" - all that energy has to go somewhere! If a nuclear plant is disconnected from the grid (tripped
by Reason077 4y ago
A nuclear power plant can't just "keep spinning without a load" - all that energy has to go somewhere! If a nuclear plant is disconnected from the grid (tripped), the nuclear reaction must be stopped (eg: by inserting control rods into the core).
- moffkalast 4y agoOf course it can, just short the generator coils and you have a free brake. The turbine should then still have resistance and shouldn't overspeed. Or just idk, use it to pump some water in a loop or discharge through some resistors. Getting rid of power isn't that hard if you want to do it. Simplest solution would I suppose be to just have an outside radiator that brings the steam to cooling tower levels of manageability so you can throttle the turbine with just a valve. The thing is, they don't really want to do it if they can save fuel by shutting down.
- Reason077 4y ago> "just short the generator coils and you have a free brake" You'll soon end up with a burning/melted generator. > "pump some water in a loop" OK, but you're going to need huge pumps (1000+ MW!). Expensive. > "or discharge through some resistors" Again, you'll need extremely large resistors, and a way to dissipate an awful lot of heat. We're talking about a huge amount of energy here!
- Scoundreller 4y agosadly, my searches for "gigawatt resistor" and "gigawatt electric load" have been fruitless.
- blibble 4y agotry "reserve ultimate heat sink" instead of "gigawatt resistor"
- moffkalast 4y agoPump water in a loop through a radiator to cool the braking generators and the resistor bank :P Could try also melting some salt on the side.